ENTERTAINING LIGHT

ENTERTAINING LIGHT Martha Rose Shulman (Bantam, $25) Food enthusiast Shulman, who loves to entertain, wrote her first cookbooks as a vegetarian caterer in Texas, then moved to Paris and made a specialty of health-wise Mediterranean cooking. Here she draws on both Mexican and Mediterranean traditions for party recipes that shun red meat but exuberantly embrace fish and fowl. There are energizing ideas here for sit-down dinners, large buffets, informal get- togethers, and impromptu bashes, with wine suggestions and imaginative hors d'oeuvres for each occasion. Shulman's party fare is sophisticated but uncomplicated, sumptuous and zesty, low in fat, and under 1,000 calories a meal. In a season of retrograde excess, she keeps our balance. A -SF